Did you know that John Brown was an abolitionist in the 1800’s? John Brown was an abolitionist (a person who fights against the use of slavery) who hated the idea, and act of slavery. He also did some questionable things to try to free slaves, as you will see as you continue to read. This is an important topic because it teaches about strategies and the importance of people trying to get rid of slavery. I think that John Brown was a villain because he killed people, started a rebellion, and lied on his trail. One reason why John Brown is a villain is because he killed innocent people. After the sack of Lawrence, where slave owners destroyed the free state city of Lawrence, John Brown was not happy. So he went to Harpers Ferry, and dragged innocent people out of their homes and killed them in cold blood. These people that he killed were not slave owners, and never intended to own any slaves. This gives evidence that John Brown was a villain because he killed multiple innocent people, and if he killed those people, then he is not a hero. Another reason why I believe that John Brown …show more content…
After John Brown was accused of treason, he went to trial and lied about the crimes that he committed. He was sentenced to death, and later wrote a note to an attorney talking about his real intentions. Brown said, “I intended to convey this idea, that it was my object to place the slaves in a condition to convey their liberties. but not that I intended to run them out of the slave states” (Brown, Document G). However, Brown earlier stated at his trial that he wanted to take the slaves out of those states and move them to Canada for a better life. This proves that Brown was lying because at trial he would not want to say that he was starting a rebellion, because he would be charged with treason, which is punishable by death. This is the third reason why I think Brown is a
Since John Brown went through his death sentence so bravely, I believe that this could have been his purpose from the beginning, not to prompt a slave revolution but to be finished and hence, sacrifice himself to the root. If this is true, then he placed the lives of twenty-three other people in danger which consisted of sixteen people that were slaughtered in the invasion, one passed away from a disease while waiting for his trial, six that were hung for their contribution to the raid and as well as the deaths of Brown’s two sons.
John Brown could be many things: a heroic leader, a violent troublemaker, a deranged madman. We would not know which or why if historians did not know to look into Brown’s past in order to find the motives behind his radical actions. By divulging into the history of John Brown, historians are able to better understand how Brown forced the entire country to make the decision to support or go against slavery in the United States. Brown made America take a good, hard look at itself in order to both confront Brown’s own views and the internal cultural problems that have been building up throughout the decades.
John Brown should be remembered as a villain and a hero because he took armed possession of the federal arsenal and launch a massive slave insurrection to free the nation’s 4 million slaves.
John Brown was a man who lived in the mid eighteen-hundreds and who fought against the evil of slavery. He had a very strong belief that slavery was unjust, and this is true, but he thought that in order to abolish slavery, violence would be the best method. That’s where he went wrong. John Brown led two attacks on slave owners and those who supported slavery, the first at Pottawatomie Creek, Kansas on May 24th, 1856, and the second at Harper Ferry, Virginia on October 16th, 1859. At Pottawatomie Creek, joined by seven others, Brown brutally hacked to death five men with sabers. These men supported slavery but weren’t even slave owners themselves. On October 16th, 1859, Brown led 21 men on another raid on Harpers Ferry attempting to take possession of the U.S. arsenal and use the weapons in a revolt against slave owners, gathering up an army of slaves as he made his way south. Brown’s attacks were not in self-defense, they were heinous acts of revenge upon slave owners, and therefore his attack had no justification.
Despite each individual having different circumstances in which they experienced regarding the institution of slavery, both were inspired to take part in the abolitionist movement due to the injustices they witnessed. The result is two very compelling and diverse works that attack the institution of slavery and argue against the reasons the pro-slavery individuals use to justify the slavery
As John Brown grew and became a man he became more and more active in the fight for abolitionism. Like his father he devoted his life to gathering money for slaves and housing those that escaped. Brown began to ...
In the 1820's, the abolitionist has not attracted many followers because there seemed to be no way to abandon slavery without another revolution. As the constitution stated that states can allow slavery, though the Northerners did not want slavery, they felt it was not their responsibility to fight against with it. State leaders such as John Adams who was against slavery, were scared to speak out against slavery as they fear to lose the support from the slave owners. During this critical period, people need a radical hero to facilitate the American Revolution.
Abolitionism quickly gained popularity since 1821 when William Lloyd Garrison assisted in writing an anti-slavery newspaper, The Genius of Universal Emancipation, with Benjamin Lundy. In 1831, abolitionism continued to grow in popularity when William Lloyd Garrison started The Liberator. Although there remained not a need for slaves in the North, slavery remained very big in the South for growing “cash crops.” The majority of the abolitionists who inhabited the North organized speeches, meetings, and newspapers to spread their cause. Initially, only small revolts and fights occurred. However, major events along the way led to the Harpers Ferry Raid. For example, with Kansas choosing whether or not to become a free or slave state. That became the biggest event up until John Brown’s Raid. John Brown had always despised slavery, and this enhanced his chance as an organized revolt. The effect of his raid on Harpers Ferry affected what the South thought about abolitionists and the power that they held.
John Wilkes Booth infamously known for the assassination of President Abraham Lincoln was himself an interesting personality. The man was a well-known American stage actor at the Ford’s theatre, Washington. Booth believed slavery was a part of the American way of life and strongly opposed president Lincoln’s view on abolition of slavery in the United States.
By researching and explaining John Brown’s deontological ethical perspective for the abolishment of slavery I now understand that something that at first seemed like terrorism against his own country was just a man standing up for what he believed in. He stood up for the rights of his fellow people! No one would like their rights, belongings, and families ripped from them to become owned by another human that has no proof of being superior to them and John Brown understood that. He did what he had to do as a follower of Christ and a strong willed American to find a resolution to the corrupt system of
John Brown was a man you lived in the mid eighteen-hundreds and who fought against slavery. John Brown had a very strong belief that slavery was wrong, and this is true, but he thought that in order to abolish slavery, violence would be the best way, that’s where he went wrong because violence cannot be justified unless it is in self-defense, Brown’s attacks were not in self-defense they were acts of revenge upon slave owners, therefore Brown’s attack had no justification. As pointed out before he went wrong when he led the raid at Pottawatomie Creek and the raid on Harpers Ferry.
John Brown became a legend of his time. He was a God fearing, yet violent man and slaveholders saw him as evil, fanatic, a murderer, lunatic, liar, and horse thief. To abolitionists, he was noble and courageous. John Brown was born in 1800 and grew up in the wilderness of Ohio. At seventeen, he left home and soon mastered the arts of farming, tanning, and home building.
Abraham Lincoln’s views on a new America, one that granted suffrage to all races, was not as popular as one may presume. While many applauded his efforts in forging a free-er land of the free, many viewed his actions as the final nail in his coffin. One man in particular, John Wilkes Booth, took this stance to heart. The assassination of Abraham Lincoln was not only aimed at a gruesome revenge, but rather voicing the anger of a nation pushed to its limits.
153). Despite the differing interpretations, Brown's trial and subsequent actions suggest a keen awareness of the consequences of his actions, leading to the conclusion that, in the legal sense, Brown was mentally sound and clearheaded about his objectives, even if they were radical and extreme. Friends and family members of John Brown testified to his insanity primarily to influence the legal proceedings surrounding his actions at Harpers Ferry, aiming to mitigate his culpability and potentially spare his life (p. 156). Testimonies suggested that Brown's mental state had been compromised since the Pottawatomie killings in Kansas, with acquaintances describing him as "crazy" regarding the subject of slavery (p. 155-156). Such assertions aimed to present Brown as incapable of fully comprehending the consequences of his actions, thus framing him as legally insane.
Fourth, evil is morally objectionable behavior, which the moral plot of the literary confession criticizes and rejects. There are three apparent existences of evil in “The Black Cat”. Above all, evil is displayed as superstition in the tale. The sentence “In speaking of […]as withes in disguise” implies that the black magic regards the black cat as witch. In the tale, the black cat destroys the character completely, so the evil here is presented as superstition.